An Investor's Business Daily editorial -- no doubt with a boost from a rival candidate's oppo -- points out that Trump has flipped on immigration:
You don't have to go back far to find a pro-amnesty statement from the No. 1 defender of deportation. At the end of June, speaking to the press in Chicago and after saying he "heard you probably have 30 million" illegal aliens in America, Trump contended:
"You have to give them a path, and you have to make it possible for them to succeed. You have to do that. But the bad ones, and there are bad ones, you have to get out, and you have to get them out fast."
That's "path" as in "path to citizenship," not a path to exit the country via our southern border. And it's clear he was referring to the bulk of the millions of aliens. The "bad ones" he would deport he depicts as a minority of the illegals. How small a minority is wide open to speculation.
Several weeks after President Obama's 2012 re-election, Trump, interviewed by Newsmax's Ron Kessler, blasted Mitt Romney's "crazy policy of self-deportation." It was "maniacal," he said, contending it cost the Republican "all of the Latino vote" and adding "he lost everybody who is inspired to come into this country."
Trump told Kessler that the Republicans must develop comprehensive immigration reform "to take care of this incredible problem that we have with respect to immigration, with respect to people wanting to be wonderful, productive citizens of this country."
Contrasting the two parties on the issues, Trump told Kessler, "The Democrats didn't have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren't mean-spirited about it. ... What they were is they were kind."
